long-toothed hinterland dweller

Living and learning - the spice of life

The food tree planting programme in our garden continues, but it is no longer so easy to find sites for new plantings.  One recent purchase, a carob tree, will be needing space to spread, and the only suitable site to accommodate it is on the stony slope of the creek bank.  It remains in its pot, awaiting an energy burst from someone to dig the necessary hole.   My resident hole-digger has suggested (more than once) that no further trees should be acquired unless he has confirmed that a suitable site available.

But last weekend I couldn't resist this sweet, healthy looking, baby cinnamon tree.

I could just imagine myself, in 3 - 4 years, turning out some home-cooked, cinnamon flavoured, carob bars!

Well, I did get just a bit carried away.  Carob trees, it turns out, are dioecious (each tree is either male or female) and for the production of carob nuts you will need one of each.  Trouble is, there seems to be no way of telling the tree's sex until it flowers.  And that only happens on maturity, which might be several years away.

My informant told me that on her property (considerably larger than our one-acre house lot) she had planted several trees, in order to be sure that there will be at least one fertile female on some distant date.

Okay, so a carob is a handsome tree, and it will still make an attractive addition to the garden.

Then the little cinnamon.  Before bringing it home we made the decision that one of the ornamentals would be removed to be replaced by the cinnamon.

This tree, a 'Pride of Barbados', was voted out.  Although at times it can be very attractive, as is shown here in bloom, most of the year it is straggly and very prickly. 

So last weekend, with one zap of the chain-saw, it was gone.  Once again, the hole for its replacement is yet to be dug, but in the meantime I began my research.

Another surprise.  The tree label read 'Cinnamomum Cassia - Cinnamon Bark Tree'  and the tag carried the statement, 'dried bark used as a spice'.

However, only after I began reading did I discover that what I had bought was a Chinese Cinnamon tree, also known as 'False Cinnamon'.  Its bark and the powder ground from it is known as cassia - a spice with both medicinal and culinary uses.  The leaves are known as Indian Bay leaves and used in the same way as the bay leaves we know.

I took comfort from an old article I found, Scary spice, in the Melbourne Age, which pointed out that there has always been confusion between cassia and the real cinnamon: 

'Cinnamon is slightly sweeter than cassia, which has traces of bitterness, and a fractionally more pungent penetrating fragrance.'  '...If you walk past a bakery and smell what you think is the delightful waft of cinnamon, don't trust your olfactory senses.  It may well be cassia that's causing your mouth to flood with saliva and your stomach to rumble.  Sydney spice expert Ian Hemphill suspects up to 98 per cent of Australian bakers, deliberately or unwillingly, use cassia instead of cinnamon.'

So there you have it.  I'll be planting my Cinnamomum cassia alongside the purely decorative Cassia fistula, and up the hill a bit from the spreading Ceratonia siliqua (aka carob). 

I hope they all have long and happy lives -- even though I may not be around to savour any of their spices.

Native greens

There's a lot of satisfaction in being able to turn a bunch of garden weeds into a gourmet meal.

Warrigal Greens - organically grown and just harvested

Little plots of Warrigal Greens have turned up everywhere in my garden - in particular under the fruit trees and around the compost heap.  These are the native Australian creeping plant, Tetragonia tetragonioides, also known as Tetragon or New Zealand Spinach, but they were not always here; we acquired the original packet of seeds from an Organic Growers' Society market stall.  After cultivating a magnificent crop in the first season, we saw the plants die off and disappear.  But year after year they reappear, popping up in the most unexpected places.

Very similar in flavour to true spinach, but fleshier and more substantial when cooked, they can be used in much the same way.  My friend Colleen has published her favourite recipe for a delicious rice-based Warrigal Greens Pie which I enjoy. 

I've also used them with ricotta cheese in a cannelloni dish many times (the recipe is on the cannelloni  packet), but this time I decided to cook them in a quiche with a little onion and a few mushrooms.

This is how it turned out.   Yum.

The next variation to try is chef Sun Hyland's recipe for Warrigal Greens and Macadamia Cannelloni with bush tomato and red capsicum concasse .

This recipe calls for macadamia nuts (my tree is planted but not bearing yet) and mountain pepper flakes (a pepper bush sounds like my next quest!). 

There are a number of easily grown bush foods I'd like to experiment with.  Today I found the website of a Sydney home gardener devoted to the 'finding, planting and eating' of Australian bush foods.  Called How to Eat Australia, it seems a good place to get some ideas.  And a quick check confirmed that there was no mention of kangaroos or their tails.  As an almost vegetarian, I was glad about that.

Making a comeback

It's been a month since I was here.  No real reason for not blogging, but what I have been doing instead is having some earlier nights.  And indulging in a lot more reading.  It's been a long time since I went to bed with a good book and I've devoured quite a few this past month - still strictly nonfiction, of course.

For a long time blogging has had me crawling into bed night after night at 1 or 2 a.m. with my eyelids drooping from too much peering at the screen -- and my mouse-hand almost paralized from hours of pointing and clicking.

As well as not posting, I've not been reading many blogs either.  Just paying a visit every so often to make sure all is well with my ever-growing list of favourite bloggers and special friends.  Interestingly, I've found that some of them have been blogging less frequently as well.  I love it when there aren't many posts to catch up on -- and my heart always skips on the days when there is only a snappy, short entry.  So I'm sure my handful of regular readers have appreciated my recent absence - that's one less for them to read!

Anyway I'm back, aiming to be here around three days a week and to catch up with my old friends a few at a time.  Thank you to those who enquired about my health.  I'm hale and hearty and life is good.

Just getting longer in the tooth.

Unavoidable, another birthday has come around.

Although the grandchildren were eager to help me blow out the candles, we dispensed with candles this year to reduce the likelihood of spreading our various coughs and sniffles.

The newest grandchild on the block came to my party too, but managed to sleep right through the celebrations.